Beauty and Peace
by x-menobsessed26
Summary: Peter's recap on his relationship with a certain redhead. one-shot


**This fic is more based off of the novelization of X2 than the movie. If you don't know how the novelization ends, and it _is_ different from the book, and you don't like spoilers, don't read this fanfiction. If you do, then read the part below.**

**_SPOILERS! _**

**In the novelization of X2 : X-men United, Jean Grey doesn't die. Instead, when she was fighting Cyclops and put up the telekinetic force field to protect herself from his blasts, she ended up going blind from the intense light created from it. It never really says whether it was permanent or temporary, but she still went blind. If that confuses you, I recommend the novel. It's a great read and everything seems to make more sense.**

Peter sat out in the garden, painting yet another picture of the marble birdbath. He had heard every joke one could possibly make about him being artistic and a big guy with an even bigger heart. For the most part, he never minded. The exceptions are when people start assuming that means he cries at the drop of a hat or make big Russian jokes. Yes, he may have a big heart, but he wasn't sensative to the point of tears around every turn. Peter Rasputin just loved beauty.

Ever since he had come to America, and pretty much dropped his real first name for the English version, the amount of beauty he saw here overwhelmed him. Sure, there was beauty back on the farm in Russia, but nothing like the estate of the Xavier Institute for Gifted Youngsters. Perhaps America was really this beautiful or perhaps he was more biased because of a woman who lived here.

If beauty was personified, Peter would swear up and down everyday that it was Jean Grey. Sure, there were plenty of other pretty women at the Institute, let alone the planet, but they all had different personalities and beliefs. His personality had meshed the best with Jean's.

He hadn't been there at Alkali Lake the day her life had changed. Peter had been ordered by Logan to get the students out. He had, but he couldn't help feeling that if he would have been there, she might be okay. He felt, the impossibility and irrationality of it aside, that it was his fault she had lost her sight.

The person who had reluctantly hurt her had been her boyfriend, Scott Summers. He had felt horrible for the longest time and surrounded himself in the guilt from the fact he hadn't been able to stop himself. A serum they had put on the back of his neck, right where his brain stem met his spinal collum, made him a violent vegetable for Colonel William Stryker's use.

As a result of that guilt, which not only stemmed from her being his girlfriend and one of his oldest friends, but also from him having to spend years of his childhood in darkness from having to keep his eyes shut or risk killing everyone around him, Scott broke it off with her and moved back to his birthplace in Alaska. That had been three years ago, and last the people at the Institute had heard, Scott was a pilot working for his grandparents' airport and engaged to a young woman named Madelyne Forrester. When Scott had left, Jean had gotten near depression, no matter how much she understood why he had done what he did, and finally took Logan up on his offers of dates.

A red dusting of fury swept through the twenty-one year old as he thought of the selfish Canadian. Logan hand't counted the fact Jean was gong to be blind into his lustful equation. After a few terrible months of Jean dating him, he got fed up with having to wait for her all the time, as she was slower and weaker without eyes of her own, and fled back to the snowy backwoods of Canada. No one has heard from him since, and honestly, no one wanted to. That had been around two and a half years ago.

No one had been able to help her after that. She gave up on the world she tought had given up on her. Peter's big nineteen year old heart had drawn her to him. He started with simple coversation that grew, eventually, into long discussions about their families, hometowns, childhoods, powers, etc. Through talking to her, he had let her hold onto a constant. Jean began to notice that not everyone sees the flaws more than the beauty of something or someone.

About one year ago, after a rather long screening at Muir Island where Dr. Moira MacTaggert was looking into getting one of her oldest friend's favorite students her sight back, Jean had come back home to a different Peter Rasputin, one she had never seen (no pun intended) before.

His girlfriend of...a long time, (no one was able to pinpoint an exact time as she had called it off so many times with him before) Kitty Pryde, had finally called it quits for good. It had sent all of the beauty out of the world for a time, until a gorgeous redheaded angel found him. That's the moment Peter had realized he had fallen in love with her.

He asked her out a week later, much to her surprise and delight. There was a seven year age difference that neither of them focused much on. Jean knew his mental maturity was well beyond that of his young years. At dusk, Peter took her to the beach. They had talked often of places where you didn't have to see the beauty as much as feel it. The beach was a frequent answer.

After a year, the two were still together. Everyone else had taken the news of their relationship as a surprised, but had basked in the joy that Jean and Peter had both found somebody nonetheless. Even better news had followed with Dr. MacTaggert announcing that she may have found the solution to Jean's eye problem. However, it was a risky procedure and could only be done one eye at a time.

Peter was in the garden waiting for Jean to wake up from her nap and join him. The garden had also been a frequent answer to beauty in places you didn't need to see. Many of the places they had named were beautiful with sight as much as other senses. Jean was scared to death about the surgery, and he had promised her he wouldn't let her face it alone.

Peter let the baintbrush make one last stroke across the canvas in order to finsih. Jean had made him swear that she would show him all of his painting if she got her sight back. He always replied with, "When. When you get your sight back."

All of his paintings held the same beautiful calm he embodied. Only then, gazing at a painting of a birdbath surrounded by roses at high noon did he realize that true happiness was a combination of real, true beauty (not all of this fake crud women like to use, whether it was a physical mask or emotional one) and peace, both of which the two of them were.

**Please review and tell me what you thought of the couple.**

**I wasn't sure whether I was overstepping my bounds by writing a couple no one has done yet, even in all the time this category has been up. It feels illegal. This is my second time doing that though, so the illegality is a little less of a feeling this time around. I'm such a criminal. ;)**


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